Twenty-four manufacturers participated in a discontinued policy survey. Below are a few charts from the survey specifically related to markdowns.

During the Advisory Board Meeting, much discussion was held on how markdowns are becoming a more common way to deal with moving discontinued products. However, most everyone agreed that given the increased discontinued product volumes, having a store full of marked down products and markdown baskets is not ideal for either store image or profit margins.

Are Markdown Funds Typically Made Available?

 

What is the Length of the Markdown Period?

 

Some key points made during the discontinued/markdown discussion included:

• There appears to be a gap of information on the sales/broker discontinued items because the process is fragmented rather than corporate wide. The result is a weakened corporate brand because no one knows the total locations where the product was discontinued.
• Rather than markdowns, it was suggested that retailers and manufacturers work together to redeploy items that aren’t selling well in some stores to stores where the products seem to be moving. This provides opportunity to rebalance store inventory.